40 fricken years ago, Mankind went to the Moon.

ScumLord

thelordofcheese wrote: »

We built the ISS in orbit, to be fair.

But to be more accurate, what i meant was that spacecraft that have nuclear powered drives would be a bad idea to launch from earth incase we had another challenger style accident, as the reactor would be up and running when everything exploded. A flying chernobyl, if you will.

I'd imagine an inert system would be far less dangerous to ship.

And we have launched probes that were nuclear powered before, the Voyager probes, for instance, but they didn't fire up until they were deployed.

Ah I see. In time they'll have to build factories in space it's to much effort sending up everything from earth.

tba

a nice little documentary for those interested

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2E00EEA7422BFE8C

Cungi

To anyone who thinks we didnt land on the moon. When the Apollo missions landed they would have left flags, marks and golfballs etc.

If we didnt land, wouldnt the Russians have made a huge deal about it? :rolleyes:

thelordofcheese

ScumLord wrote: »

Ah I see. In time they'll have to build factories in space it's to much effort sending up everything from earth.

Not really much point, we'd have to ship the raw materials up there first.

I'd imagine that if we set up a lunar base, we'd take to literally, loading rockets with a payload of what's needed, firing it directly at the moon, and having it just do an airbag-mediated touchdown, like the Mars Pathfinder missions

ShooterSF

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Not really much point, we'd have to ship the raw materials up there first.

I'd imagine that if we set up a lunar base, we'd take to literally, loading rockets with a payload of what's needed, firing it directly at the moon, and having it just do an airbag-mediated touchdown, like the Mars Pathfinder missions

If that payload lands on the piece of the moon I bought on ebay. I'm keeping it.

thelordofcheese

ShooterSF wrote: »

If that payload lands on the piece of the moon I bought on ebay. I'm keeping it.

I annexed liberated the part of the moon you bought on Ebay yesterday. Your vile tyranny is over!

ShooterSF

thelordofcheese wrote: »

I annexed liberated the part of the moon you bought on Ebay yesterday. Your vile tyranny is over!

Not fair. I hardly got any tyranny at all I shall report you to the United Nations of the Moon.

Captain Chaos

ScumLord wrote: »

Ah I see. In time they'll have to build factories in space it's to much effort sending up everything from earth.

There will be alot of raw materials that will still have to come from Earth unless we can start mining asteroids. You can't just start making stuff from nothing. If we wanted to go down the nuclear power route which I think will have to happen at some stage, the Uranium will have to me mined and processed here befre being put in a reactor in orbit.

GlobalStranger

:eek:

thelordofcheese

ShooterSF wrote: »

Not fair. I hardly got any tyranny at all I shall report you to the United Nations of the Moon.

What will they do? Write me a sternly worded moon letter?

HAHAHAHAHAHA, THE MOON WILL BE MINE!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

All true, the US did indeed land on the moon. Also, the moon is made out of cheese, which is why it's difficult to send the stuff to the US in te first place.

Niall09

Nobody messes with Buzz :eek:

kingtut

Mankind never went to the moon, it was all an elaborate hoax. If they put as much effort into actually trying to get to the moon as they did putting the hoax together then they may have actually made it!!

dsmythy

I know one thing for sure. Woman certainly didn't land on the moon!

dsmythy

People who believe in the moon landing hoax conspiracy have issues....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Moon_Landing_hoax_conspiracy_theories#Critiques_of_hoax_accusations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2008_season)#Episode_104_.E2.80.93_.22NASA_Moon_Landing.22

Read their arguments get debunked. They'll still push the same crap though. Very annoying.

Wibbs

The original plan of Werner Von Braun was a bit different. He intended to build a heavy lifting rocket to enable us to get a large space station in orbit from which easier launches to the moon and mars could be made. A much better bet. The Apollo was a fast track "lashup" to get them there quicker a la Kennedys "by the end of the decade" lark. Way cheaper too. Though it was a one trick pony. You couldnt use the saturn 5 to get you to mars.

The shuttle couldn't make it to the moon. Not without serious rejigging. Though...... I suppose if you discarded the shuttles main tank and solid rocket boosters and swapped them for a heavy lifting rocket, maybe it could be done. The main getting into space bit would be taken over by the heavy lifter, at which point the shuttle would be in high orbit. Have a main fuel tank already up there that you dock with and then use it burn and go for trans lunar insertion. The one advantage of the shuttle(and it's disadvantage) is it's dirty great cargo bay. Put a lander in there. The shuttle is more comfortable than the apollo command module so you could afford an extra day or two making the trip (5 days maybe). I reckon if they really really needed to get there and they only had the shuttle it could be done. Especially if they got the oul russians involved. Their heavy lifting rockets are pretty amazing.

I was a toddler when they landed the first time. I was watching it but dont remember. I do remember the last one though. Cried my eyes out, because it felt like they werent going back. I knew they wouldn't either. Maybe not even in my lifetime. Arthur C Clarke said(or words to the effect) that any technology advanced enough, looks like magic, well a little bit of magic happened 40 years ago. I think thats why so many reckon it was faked. It just seems a little beyond our capability. A little bit of the future that fell into the past by mistake.

Maybe that was the highlight of manned exploration of the heavens. We went for a short swim beyond the breakers and now resign ourselves to paddling at the waters edge, while we send remote control boats out further. Maybe we won't do it again. It's happened before. The chinese sent huge ships to explore the world. Bumped into australia and the americas 100 years before Columbus. And then promptly stopped and looked inward. The vikings did similar. The Egyptians built the biggest stone structures to this very day and then promptly stopped.

We could stand on mars in under ten years. Easily. If we put our minds to it, and "return them safely to earth" too. We need to as well. This earth is very fragile and I dont just mean in the hippie dippy sense of the word. The Apollo guys to a man mentioned it's uniqueness and fragility.

Bear in mind these guys weren't counterculture hippies. They were buzzcut test pilots in their 40's and beyond, yet they saw the fragility of that blue ball in space. Some went all spiritual and some found God(he seems to get around:D) and all saw the earth as the real lesson of it all. Fragile it really is and it's all there is for us. It makes sense to colonise somewhere else as a species.

That's what made the first of us move onto the grasslands and then to the middle east and to asia and europe and beyond. A fancy extra from robot wars running around mars is good but it's no substitute. It's no substitute for a man and woman walking and talking and exploring and living and looking back at the womb that formed them. That's both knowledge and an insurance policy.

We need to get out there again.

kingtut

People who don't believe in the moon landing hoax conspiracy have issues....

c4cat

seamus wrote: »

Actually, much of the world at that time was polarised (you were there) between communists and capitalists. Although the US was in the grips of McCarthyism, the rest of the "free" world felt equally threatened by the communist superpower, and the fact that they weren't separated by an ocean.

With the moon landing being basically an attempt to say "fnck you" by the Americans to the Russians, the rest of the western world allies themselves with this feeling and to a certain extent it really felt like a battle was won on one front.

You know, you were there.

I wasn't.

McCarthyism was from 1940s to the late 1950s. the first Moon landing was 1969 when flower power was at it's height how do you relate McCarthyism to the moon landings?

c4cat

Wibbs wrote: »

Bear in mind these guys weren't counterculture hippies. They were buzzcut test pilots in their 40's and beyond, yet they saw the fragility of that blue ball in space. Some went all spiritual and some found God(he seems to get around:D) and all saw the earth as the real lesson of it all. Fragile it really is and it's all there is for us. It makes sense to colonise somewhere else as a species.

some were in fact in their 30s Neil was anyway